Victor Toews, Canada’s Minister of Public Insecurity and Zombification, rendered by Edmonton artist William Prettie. Below, a shifty looking Mr. Toews as he appears in the halls of Parliament. Pat Martin is a Great Canadian. ™

What a perfect way to throw a little red meat to your gun-nut money machine!

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s so-called Conservatives – of whom it cannot be said too many times are radicals bent on remaking Canada in the image of the worst aspects of the United States – managed to hit on a moment of worldwide horror at the slaughter of 20 small children and six grownups in the United States to further weaken our country’s gun laws, which are already crumbling thanks to this government’s avarice and cynicism, by allowing more chaos to reign at Canadian “gun shows.”

The decision was published Wednesday in the Canada Gazette, just five days after the massacre in Connecticut that left decent people everywhere reeling.

Given the opportunity for a little public decency and respect for our neighbour’s tragedy and the chance to raise a few more shekels from our country’s firearms fanatics, I guess, there was really no choice for these Harperites. Or maybe it was just the deadline of the Canada Gazette. Whatever, it’s powerfully symbolic.

So Mr. Harper sent out Victor Toews – the country’s Minister of Public Insecurity and the target of one of MP Pat Martin’s final, well-placed Tweets – and his tame, pro-gun “advisory” committee to justify the repeal this country’s sensible regulations governing gun-show sales of firearms.

This will please the hysterical gun-nut lobby in their tireless campaign to introduce sufficient chaos to Canada’s firearms sales regime to cause the entire regulatory edifice to collapse, in return for which the Harperites hope to create an issue capable of wedging rural votes away from the New Democratic Party and directing a stream of cash from the gun lobby into the Conservatives’ coffers.

Interestingly, late in the day, apparently too late to pull the Gazette off the press, even buffoons like Mr. Toews must have realized just how horrific were the optics of their timing – and the government now claims to want to “take another look” at the committee of toadies it set up to help it dismantle Canadian gun laws. This is about as persuasive as this government’s fable that it has pushed the reset button on the F-35 see-through-fighter boondoggle.

As is well known, anarchic American gun shows are a favoured way for that unfortunate country’s tens of thousands of irresponsible gun owners to purchase weapons without background checks and to circumvent other local attempts to control the misuse of weapons.

Ironically, and as the Harper Conservatives know very well, U.S. gun “shows” are carnivals of criminality. Indeed, that is why they are one of the key areas being eyed by President Barack Obama for action in the wake of the Sandy Hook horror. Most Canadians wish President Obama well in this effort, even as we question his chances of success.

Thankfully, we have hitherto avoided such a situation in Canada – although this cynical government, like their Republican brethren in the United States, is prepared to sacrifice our safety for the most craven of reasons.

Even the Globe and Mail, the government’s well-trained poodle on most issues, mildly tapped the Harperites on the wrist for this travesty – although it worked hard as usual to let them off the hook for its timing.

The Globe’s editorial on the topic concluded: “Gun shows are a legitimate target for some measure of control. We just don’t live in the same world we did prior to the Sandy Hook tragedy.” Although, count on it, Canada’s gun nuts will soon work themselves into a hysterical frenzy insisting that in fact nothing at all has changed.

Today we will finally hear from the National Rifle Association, who like the cowards they are have been keeping their heads down and their lips zipped since last Friday’s massacre. Count on it that Canada’s Anti-Gun-Control Rage Machine will flood the Twitterverse with the NRA’s defence of responsible nerve gas ownership or whatever talking points they manage to come up with.

NOTE: Speaking of Canada’s firearms lobby, on this occasion and at this site I am going to rip a page from the book of Warren Kinsella, who recently told the gun-nut set: “Don’t try and post here. I won’t approve your comments. I’m sick of you. I detest you. I don’t want to hear from you. No sane person wants to hear from you. You’re a variant on al-Qaeda, and you’re too deranged to realize it. Go to Hell, where the likes of you belong.”

I wholeheartedly concur. The agents of the anti-gun-law rage machine are legion, and repeat the same tiresome and mostly preposterous arguments for their anti-social hobby over and over and over again.

Since they have untold places to repeat their nonsense, their redirections and misdirections, their preposterous claims, as well as enjoying the apparent enthusiastic support of the government of Canada, I’m going to give myself the satisfaction of deleting them all when they turn up here. They can even post them on Rabble or in the Calgary Beacon, places where this blog also appears, and which have a deeper commitment to the freedom of speech of these loons than I obviously do.

But as far as I am concerned, they can all drop dead. If they don’t like it, they can write a letter to the editor of the Internet.

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THIS JUST IN (10 a.m., Mountain Standard Time): The vicious fruitcakes at the National Rifle Association in Fairfax, Va., have identified the cause of the American pathology of school massacres: video games! Gosh, they must have toiled all week to come up with that inspired gem of a marketing strategy – out of “respect” for the victims and their families, no doubt. The NRA has also provided a “solution”: arm the teachers! Are these Tea Party lunatics sure this is what they really want: more firepower for militant public service union members? This may be something for Victor Toews, Stephen Harper and the other rat-faced fund-raisers of the Rosehip Tea Party of Canada to think about before they adopt the idea with a jerk of their knees. As for the Tory Rage Machine, which is certain to be re-Tweeting the NRA’s talking points even before they climb out of their jammies, what are they going to do with their spare time if they succeed at their new quest for video-game control?

Good call on limiting access (denying access) to the gun nuts. My family hunts (although I don’t), we own a few rifles and we eat what we kill. But these gun idiots do not need a soap box, a muzzle yes, but not a soap box.

Thank you Mr. Climenhaga. I have followed your blog in the last couple of years because you are such a voice of reason in an apparent wasteland but your current rebuff of the self procalimed gun nutz gives me far more than vacarious pleasure. All the seasons greetings to you and your loved ones.

We have managed to postpone armageddon yet again, those were tense moments watching the CBC morning crew count the seconds down to 6:12am. The world survived and now I have Christmas shopping to conduct, which always proves to be more nerve wracking than watching the juniors try and proctect a lead against the Russians at the WJHC.

Then, along comes Canada’s Senior Hall Monitor to look the other way whilst the neighbourhood cranks stuff cherry bombs in public lavatories, so to speak. I say this because Vic treats most Canadians as helpless in deciding what’s best for them. Only VT can see the danger in allowing convicts to have pizza parties for charities, what’s most galling is that they use their money to stimulate local economies. Heck, they might even tip! But, alas it’s probably part of a broader scheme to stage a midnight breakout by jacking a Pizza Hut car! Vic knows. Oh, how Vic knows:

“Canadians were concerned that dangerous and violent prisoners had across the board access to pizza parties and BBQ socials.” It’s a dangerous world alright.

After all, guns don’t kill people, clumsy fingers do and besides a gun-nut is law abiding until they decide not to be. Then we’ll get ‘em. Get ‘em good and have a good cry, just like the Americans do and boast how the Cons are ‘tough on crime’. It’s best to let the horses out of the barn first, so you can build a stronger door without being distrubed:

It’s puzzling how the country seems to always be 5 or 10 years behind the Americans on copying stupid ideas and policies, even when everyone knows what the American experience has been. Yet the reactionary, hard done by right wingers, with their professional whiners and complainers from The Black Hole Sun Network and other institutions seem to hold sway over this under educated but ‘common sense’ government of smirking smart alec’s and garner just enough support to create an alternate reality. When they say “it isn’t about the money, you know it’s about the money”. And votes, always the votes.

It’s a fair trade off as far as the Cons are concerned, gun-nuts get more ‘freedom’ to make the rest of us uneasy and potentially vulnerable. The gun lovers have to endure paperwork and ‘training courses’ which is a serious restriction on their ‘liberty’ just the long form census does, which the rest of us must sacrifice to make them feel as whole citizens. It’s a weight we must carry for them because we’re just so mean and don’t understand their ‘rights’ to act as the real men they protend.

I heard enough of tragic hunting accidents and foolish near misses growing up in the 70′s to know that it only takes Elmer Fudd a split second to change a person’s life forever.

Yet smokers are vilified, demonized and osterzied as being social misfits,even when they contribute huge sums in tax revenue, profits and early death. So I commend you and Pat Martin for letting Vic, the Cons and gun nuts have it, not that calling a spade a spade helps any but it makes a person feel a bit better when considering the twisted garden path we are to follow.

See what happens when an American gun abolitionist exercises his First Amendment right to free speech. Detroit Metro Times is a liberal weekly on the order of Calgary’s Fast Forward. The vitriol and hatred the writer experiences in the comments section is breathtaking. Maybe if Harper and Co. play their cards right we too can cause people around the world to wonder if all North Americans are totally insane.

I’ve held the opinion that Harper and the boys aren’t ideologically bent on relaxing Canadian gun laws – US lite so to speak. I mean, what politician wants an armed populace? I chalked it up to political wedge issues to get votes. But Vic and the gang have me thinking they may really believe this shit.

Best. Slur. Ever. from MP Pat Martin. I mean every one should be calling Conservatives ‘rat-faced whores’. If the shoe fits, and all that.

When I took over the family farm I inherited a shotgun and a .22 rifle from my father. I never use the shotgun but the .22 comes in very handy for the periodic murderous rampages required to keep the richardson ground squirrel under control. That said, I have never understood the antipathy my fellow rednecks have for sensible gun laws. The cancellation of the long gun registry is simply preposterous. Doubtless, it cost far more than it should have. But I fail to see how spending even more to get rid of it does any good. I was happy to comply with the law – it only made sense to me to take a firearms safety course and to purchase a proper cabinet for the safe storage of my guns. A license is required to operate a motor vehicle, even to sell Taber corn by the side of the road for God’s sake. So what’s the big deal about licensing a gun?
Guns don’t kill people; people kill people – I get that. Also true: cigarettes don’t kill people; people who smoke cigarettes kill people (themselves, generally). Smoking used to be cool and could be done anywhere, never mind the rights of the non-smoker. Today, after decades of lobbying and public education, smokers have been marginalized and the activity is banned in virtually all public places. The vast majority now accept that this is as it should be. I imagine it will require the same multi-decade determined, persistent effort on the part of many interested groups and individuals to make guns similarly uncool.
Interesting statistic: In the US where good people have guns to protect themselves from all the bad people with guns – 32 firearm related homicides per DAY. In the UK, where the senseless worship of guns is strongly discouraged – 18 firearm related homicides per YEAR.

One of your best posts this year. And I love your decision to stop comments from the gun nutz. I am tired of the way they frame their arguments, and I’m tired of their thoughts that their ‘right’ to arm themselves to the teeth should take precedence over the safety of everyone (and especially children). Enough is enough.

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"In (U of A Law and History Professor James Muir's) analysis, the new legislation, with its pointed emphasis on stiff fines for advocating an illegal strike, is designed in part to intimidate high-profile, labour-affiliated bloggers, such as Dave Climenhaga …" - Paula Simons, Edmonton Journal Read More